


the short, yet still remarkable, tale of another fool in love

by londoneyedgirl



Series: stories inspired by [8]
Category: Secret Forest
Genre: Angst and Humor, Gen, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 07:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14711490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/londoneyedgirl/pseuds/londoneyedgirl
Summary: “What do you do when you fall in love with someone who’ll never love you back?”“Wait- so you really can love people who aren’t yourself?”-“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who’ll never love you back?”“Since when do you have feelings?”“Since always, you dick. Having no feelings is Simok’s thing.”-alternatively titled, the one where dongjae is an idiot who falls for the one person who he could never con into loving him back.





	the short, yet still remarkable, tale of another fool in love

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this around late march, when i finished watching the show. it's definitely one of the best i've ever seen, and among the characters that i fell in love, simok and dongjae stood out. i loved simok right from the start, but dongjae was the surprise - i expected to absolutely hate him, but as the story progressed, i found myself falling for his messy, idiot ass lmao with that being said, i liked their dynamics very much and truthfully i only toyed with the idea of shipping them to myself. i started writing this with no intent of posting it, but then i thought "why not?" i haven't written anything for a tv show or a film in a long while, and it'd be nice.

“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who’ll never love you back?”

“Wait- so you really can love people who aren’t yourself?”

-

“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who’ll never love you back?”

“Since when do you have feelings?”

“Since always, you dick. Having no feelings is Simok’s thing.”

-

So, here’s the thing: yes, Dongjae has feelings, and yes, he can love someone who isn’t himself.

(Really, just ask his son, or his son’s mother - he loves him, and he loved her, too. Once.)

But love isn’t something he pays attention to nowadays. He has other things, more important things, to do - things that don’t involve others unless he’s getting benefits out of it. He’s not gonna deny that he’s as self-centered as it gets, mostly only doing what will give him some sort of profit or overall benefit in the present or in the near future, and he’s just fine the way he is. Really.

So it doesn’t make sense that he’s feeling like this right now. He didn’t even have the chance to end it before it got too strong - when he noticed it, it was already too strong to fight it.

(There’s this phrase he saw somewhere or whatever, that goes “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.” It’s ridiculous, but it also kind of describes how he feels. He hadn’t even realized it had happened, until it was there, that foreign feeling in his chest whenever _he_ was in the room.)

So now he doesn’t know where to go from here. Pining from afar isn’t really his style - if anything, other people pine over him (I mean, have you looked at him? He’s hot. He’s aware.) But he knows he can’t necessarily approach his _crush_ \- he feels so young talking like that - and confess, or whatever it is that kids do. He knows what the answer will be.

You’re thinking, i _f he’s so hot, how can anyone deny him? He’s charming, too. I’d date him, if he wanted me!_ But, well, it’s not that simple. Because to Dongjae, things could never be simple.

Because he couldn’t fall in love with someone who could like him back, that’d be too damn easy. No, he went and fell for the one person who knew all of his dirt and could never feel not even compassion for him, especially because he barely feels anything.

He went and fell for Simok.

Yes, he’s an idiot. He’s also aware of that.

-

“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who will never love you back?”

“You try to forget them.”

“Okay, but what if you work with them and end up seeing them every day?”

“Then I guess you're pretty much fucked, my friend.”

-

“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who will never love you back?”

“You… You could date someone else?”

“What good would that make?”

“Well, it could get your mind off the person you love, for starters. At the very least, you'd be getting laid regularly.”

“Mmm.”

-

Dongjae doesn't have a proper plan on how to deal with it yet. So far, all he's got is keep things as normal as possible, with the exception that he kind of finds himself trying to be close to Simok. Like, all the time.

He can't help it, he really can't. He blinks and he finds himself drifting closer to Simok, even if Simok couldn't care less whether he's there or not.

Sometimes when they have lunch together, they don't say nothing at all. And even with the constant silence, Dongjae likes it. That's how hard he's fallen. He likes spending time in silence with Simok. He wouldn't ever be able to even complain about it, it's not like he'd get to spend time with Simok elsewhere. He'll take what he can get.

He doesn't know exactly what it is that attracts him about Simok. In more ways than one, they've got more differences between each other than similarities, and it's already been established how in love with himself Dongjae is. They're different, and yet he wants him. He doesn't know what to do.

One of the things he truly has in common with Simok, however, is their beauty. Now, they don't look alike, at all; but Simok has his beauty, in the same way that Dongjae has his. Even if Dongjae often realizes that a lot of what he finds beautiful in Simok isn't what he would usually find beautiful in other people.

For starters, Simok isn't very tall.

Okay, that's a bit unfair. Simok _is_ tall; just not as tall as Dongjae. To be fair, by the way, Dongjae isn't really bothered by it; in fact, he'd even go so far as to say that he finds it attractive, the height difference between them, and it isn't in any way similar to how much he enjoys the height difference between himself and other women. He doesn't kid himself - he's well aware that Simok is a man. He enjoys it.

Simok also isn’t necessarily the lean and athletic sort of guy. Dongjae knows he runs, so he keeps himself fit and healthy enough, but he isn’t muscly nor he seems to care much about that. But, see, when Dongjae imagines - _imagined_ , it was _one_ time, it isn’t a recurring event, alright - himself wrapping his arms around Simok’s torso, or even throwing an arm around Simok’s middle in bed, he found that he’d rather enjoy the softness of it. He forced himself to stop imagining it when desire became deep, lasting longing, and his chest started hurting and he’s alright with pining from afar, but he _tries_ not to instigate the feeling more than what he can’t hold back.

Finally, Simok has thin lips. Now, Dongjae will admit, he doesn’t have very full lips either, but he’s always found it extremely attractive and it wasn’t only once or twice that he took a partner, be it a man or a woman, to bed simply because their mouths were that beautifully distinctive and harmonious with the rest of their faces. However, with Simok, Dongjae will find himself losing moments of his day thinking about the delicate lines of his lips, the perfect shape of them, and fantasizing about feeling them against his own. He wonders if they’d fit together right away, whether they’d struggle to find a way to kiss that’d match both of them, or whether they’d magically settle into each other, like lost puzzle pieces of a same two-piece image.

Dongjae wonders if he has too much time in his hands, and whether he should increase his workload to leave him less time to think about Simok. He wonders if it’d even work.

-

“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who will never love you back?”

“So you really like Simok, huh?”

“Wait, what?”

“You're not exactly as subtle as you might think.”

-

“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who will never love you back?”

“Usually, I'd tell you to maybe approach them in a friendly manner and try to make them fall in love with you.”

“But?”

“But considering who you're in love with, and who _you_ are, you're pretty much a lost cause.”

“What, so everyone knows it now? Great.”

-

Naturally, one might wonder how could someone like Dongjae - essentially a flatterer, an adulator, and, according to some, a lackey, who’d do just about anything to have the best things in life and have them for a long, long time - could ever fall in love with someone like Simok - the man who promised his career, that to him is his whole life, to the solving of a case to the whole nation; the man who had no qualms about exposing fellow prosecutors for corruption even though he _knew_ he’d end up in some air conditioner-less, hot, packed and forgotten town in the middle of nowhere by doing so. Dongjae wishes he could enlighten the people, but, truth be told, he couldn’t explain it even to himself.

The theory of opposites attracting each other could even fit, but in the end it’d be found lacking. Besides, Dongjae doesn’t think that law extends to anywhere beyond science. He knows that it’d be a lot easier if he’d fallen for a liar, a cheat, a ruthless con man or woman, an opportunist, someone more like himself, because it’d be much like having a partner in crime. Simok would do the very contrary of it: he’d straight up send him to jail, no questions asked, as long as he had the evidence - and he almost did, too, a while ago.

Having Simok in his life more than he already is would make Dongjae have to work even harder to keep himself in line, to the point where he’d have to make double the - honest - work and get rewarded way less than he used to be.

It’s rather telling, and kind of lovely from a point of view, and kind of sad from another, that he would still wish for it, knowing how much more he’d have to struggle, even though a life without Simok would be significatively easier for his shenanigans.

-

“What do you do when you fall in love with someone who will never love you back?”

Silence.

A simple, short and acknowledging hum.

“I don't know. Why are you asking me this?”

A deeply exaggerated sigh.

“That's not important. Indulge me.”

“I’m afraid I can't help you. I don't think I've been in love before.”

Uncharacteristic silence follows.

“Oh. Okay, thank you.”

A few seconds of silence come.

“How is it?”

“How is what?”

“Being in love.”

“You really want to know?”

Silence follows, filled with a pointed look and an agreeing nod.

“I guess it depends. It’s not the same for everyone; I can only tell you how it is for me.”

An encouraging hum follows.

“It’s… Weird, at first. It hits you out of nowhere, you’re not quite expecting it. Your days are filled with so much to do, to the point where you don’t even notice it until you’re hit right in the face with it. It’s like, there’s this person, this one person who interests you more than anyone else. You think of them more often than you think of others, without you even realizing it or trying to do so. Sometimes, when you try out a new dish, you’ll wonder if that person would enjoy it as much as you do. When you achieve something, that person is the first you think of, and you wonder whether they'd be proud of you for it. You try to improve yourself for them, you try to be better. It’s not like in romance novels - do you read romance novels?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, okay. Um, sorry. It’s not like in the novels, where they talk about a fluttering feeling in your stomach and sweating palms and tripping over your feet, not always; but your heart beats faster when you’re in the presence of that person, significatively so. You either speak a lot, ramble away, or you’re tongue-tied and without a clue of what to say. You want to always show the best of you to that person, even if there aren’t many things that would be considered _good_ in you. And you want that person to be happy, at all times. You want them to have great things only, and when they achieve something, you feel proud of and joyful for them as though their achievement is your own, even if you’re well aware that it isn’t.”

A moment of pause, a deep, sharp breath being taken in and then let out.

“And it’s also knowing whether you deserve that person or not. It’s loving them even when you know that you don’t match, at all; even when you know that enough to want them to be with someone who is as honest as them, as just and as selfless and as strong as they are. It’s letting go when you know it’s the right thing to do, even when all you want to do is to pull them in, try to win them over. It’s wanting only the best for the one you love.”

The silence that settles, then, is longer and quieter than before. The air coming out of their mouths is the only thing heard.

And then comes an acknowledging, thoughtful hum. It’s calm and peaceful. Steady.

“That’s a very thorough explanation. Thank you, Dongjae.”

A humourless little huff of air is puffed out.

“Anytime, Simok.”

-

Dongjae doesn’t like things that are doomed from the start. He’s a best-case-scenario type of guy - when he gets into a hard situation, he’s instantly thinking of the easiest, best and more successful long-term wise way to get out of it. But he knows it, right from the moment when he realizes that he is in love and for whom his heart skips a beat, that this won’t have a happy-ever-after sort of ending.

There are many factors to mention, too many odds against him, standing between him and his true love’s kiss. The main one, the strongest one there is, remains that his feelings aren’t, never have been and never will be returned. That’s it. It isn’t his questionable morals, or the gender slash sexuality issues with society that he’ll barely even touch with a stick now, or even . It’s the annoying, distressing ache of knowing Simok will never feel the same towards him. And that- That hurts more than he could ever expect.

Still, he’ll make the most out of it. He’s not as much of a menace as before, but he’s still Seo Dongjae - and he might not have a happy ending, but he’ll make sure that it’s, at the very least, satisfying for him. It’d be settling, which he’s been avoiding all his life, but it’s best outcome he can possibly wish for. He knows a lost case when he sees one.


End file.
